


My Spirit

by unwillingadventurer



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Humour, M/M, rafflesweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 01:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18110420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwillingadventurer/pseuds/unwillingadventurer
Summary: Bunny would do anything to see Raffles again including summoning him from the dead!





	My Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Raffles week- Raffles and Bunny in Ham Common. This is a rather alternative take on the two of them at Ham Common lol
> 
> This story was inspired after watching 'Blithe Spirit'.

In the months since I had lost Raffles, I had scarcely done anything, not even being able to face simple tasks that would require me to remove the things from my life that reminded me of him. Instead I was locked in denial, clinging to the desperate hope of being able to reach him somehow. This desperation became a mission and when by chance I discovered that our landlady at Ham Common ran a secret side business as a spiritual medium, well it was almost as if my prayers had been answered. 

We had several unsuccessful attempts in which her communicating with a spirit she called ‘Ralph’ proved fruitless, we had an unusual encounter with an angered being with that name who was most certainly not my Raffles and instead some kind of poltergeist who threw my china pattern onto the floor (when I think about it, that was almost a Raffles thing to do, he hated that pattern, but I digress). Therefore, it took six times of calling for Ralph for it to occur to me that she’d have to use his real name for any kind of success. So, one dark and stormy night we summoned ‘Raffles’, claiming it was a nickname that he preferred to be called, and she believing it because for some reason she believed everything I told her about him. But nothing happened. We called his name, we reached out for his presence, we made fools of ourselves and when I went to bed that very night I felt as alone as I had done all those previous days. I had to accept that Raffles wasn’t coming back.

I was beginning to believe that spiritualism was all a bunch of hokum and so I clear put it to the back of my mind for a while, ready to start my new life- no matter how hard it was going to be on my own. I had to put the ghost of Raffles to rest, but soon discovered that the ghost of Raffles was not so easy to keep still.

Stretching my arms after another restless night, I arose from my bed and undrew the curtains. I glanced outside, rubbing my weary eyes as I did so. It was a beautiful morning, sun shining, birds singing, the image of A.J Raffles in cricket whites sitting on the little wall running along the outside of the property. I waved at him. I often saw my old friend first thing in the morning when he occupied my mind and I had yet to feel he had left me. But as I waved, to my surprise he waved back. My delusions had never done that before. I peered out of the window and he was beckoning me nearer and nearer. I grabbed my walking stick and hobbled outside with a feeling of both fear and excitement but when I made my way into the garden his figure was no longer waving but instead leaning over the flowerbeds, smelling the roses. He was much more solid than I’d seen him in my visions before and instead of tanned he seemed to be pale white all over with an almost greenish hue surrounding him.

“Hello?” I said, approaching cautiously. He was still bending over and usually if I rubbed my eyes hard enough at that moment he would disappear, but he didn’t, he was still there, his face looking downward, mesmerised by the flowers.

He suddenly looked up. “Ah there you are, Bunny,” he said with the soothing silky voice I was beginning to forget. 

I stood back in confusion and apprehension. He was the young A.J Raffles from our days together at the Albany- the beauty of a man with the wavy black hair and eyes of blue. How could this be? Was it an illusion? He was always older in my visions! I had clearly had a rough night and my mind was playing tricks. I was depressed. I was lonely. My body was tired and run down and my injury painful. All this combined had clearly sent me into a breakdown in which I was seeing things. Well, seeing more things than was normal!

“Bunny, are you alright old chap?” Raffles said, now caressing a rose between his white-green fingers. He plucked it from the bush and handed it to me. “A rose for my Rabbit.”

I took the flower, but in my confusion, I crushed it in my hand. “A.J are you alive?” I didn’t know what I was saying. He was dead, of course he was. I’d been there. This Raffles was a figment of my imagination.

He laughed. “Afraid not, Bunny, I’m quite dead I can assure you. But you needn’t be frightened, after all, you were the one who summoned me.”

I shook my head. “No, no, that was a lark, it wasn’t real. This isn’t real.” I began to edge away from him, walking backwards very slowly, hoping that if I did, the impostor Raffles would disappear. I spun around to stagger inside, my war injury preventing me from any running and I made haste to the cottage.

“Boo!” 

I screamed. A.J Raffles was now in front of me, his face pressed up close to mine, that devilish smile wide across his pale greenish face. I screamed again. 

“Don’t deny what’s in front of you, Bunny.”

“No, you’re merely a piece of undigested beef!” I rubbed my eyes. I rubbed them again but when I looked, he was still there, observing me.

“You conjured me, Bunny, you wanted me here.”

“I wanted you to be alive, I wanted one last time with you.”

“I’m here, Bunny, maybe not in the flesh but the next best thing.”

“I’m not listening to you anymore. If you could just go back to wherever you came from, I’d be grateful.”

I slowly made my way inside and to my surprise he didn’t follow and after a while I could breathe again that this so-called apparition had departed. I ran a bath and took off my clothes, attempting to ease my nerves and banish away any delusions as a result of stress. I immersed myself under the soothing water, slipping under the bubbles and letting the fragrant aroma calm my senses. It would be alright. Everything was peaceful. 

But then, I felt a hand upon my arm and I flinched. I looked, and to my dismay, there was A.J Raffles again, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, grinning. He reached into the water and splashed it against my skin.

“How did you get in here?” I spluttered.

“I had little trouble getting into locked rooms in the old days, my dear friend, even less so now I can actually walk through them.”

“But you can’t be him, you can’t be!”

He smiled widely and with pride. “He and no other!”

I gulped and stared at the youthful face of my old companion. It was both terrifying and wonderful to be able to gaze upon that face again though the green hue was rather unsettling, making him appear a little queasy.

“If you are the real Raffles, why must you wander in on me whenever you feel like it?”

“But isn’t that what I used to do when I was alive?”

I had no response, it was true, he did have a habit of walking in on me when I was taking a bath. “Well, I don’t mean to be rude but can’t you go back?”

“I don’t know how to. You brought me here. I was there one moment, here the next.”

“There? Where’s there?”

“The next place, Bunny, the beyond.”

“You mean you went up there?” I pointed at the ceiling. 

“Not quite so north, I’m afraid.” 

He instead pointed to the ground and I gasped. Raffles had been a villain, yes, but I’d never expected him to end up down there in the place I dared not speak about. 

He laughed. “It’s not quite as bad as they tell you. Fire and flame and damnation, it certainly rouses you, keeps you on your toes, and as you know I love a challenge.”

“And do they poke pointy things up your bottom and all that?” I couldn’t believe what I had just asked. I saw a ghost for the first time and I didn’t ask about God or enlightenment or avenging sins, I asked about that! I felt my face redden but all I could focus on was Raffles picking up a bath sponge and running it down my back. It felt so good.

“It is not altogether a… bad experience,” he said, winking at me. “It’s all different in the beyond, Bunny, you don’t feel so anxious, so caught up in things, you just are. It’d suit you perfectly my worrisome Rabbit.”

He was viewing me with terrifying eyes and I flinched as I saw his hands drop the sponge and instead reach for my head. 

“What are you doing?”

“A few minutes, Bunny, a quick dunk and you can join me in the thereafter. We’ll be together for eternity!”

I attempted to move but my good leg twisted awkwardly and my big toe became wedged under the tap. I tried to free myself but he was still staring at me. “Are you… trying to kill me?” I stammered.

“Only with your permission, old sport. Think of it more as euthanasia, as painless and as quick as possible for a good purpose.” 

He released my toe and I scrambled out of the bathtub as quickly as I could, sending water everywhere. I next searched for the towel that I seemed to have misplaced but I heard a cough and there he was, A.J Raffles, standing nonchalantly in the doorway, his body leaning against the frame, his arms crossed, draping the towel over them.

“This what you’re looking for?”

“I say, give that back! First you try to drown me and then you steal my towel.”

He threw it at me and then disappeared, vanished from right in front of me, filtering away like the lingering smoke from a blown-out candle. Had he gone for good? Did I banish him somehow?

…

When the hours passed and I had not heard nor seen him, I concluded he was gone and that perhaps he had drifted back to where he came from. But in those hours, I suddenly felt guilty that I had been so unhelpful. What if he had been a spirit wanting my help? What if it wasn’t my imagination and it was actually my Raffles returning to me? I felt strange then. I had wanted so much to see him but when he was standing right in front of me, it was as though I was looking right through him, refusing to accept the phenomena. And now I was not just missing the alive Raffles I was even missing the ghost of Raffles!

I couldn’t sleep that night and found myself downstairs, dozing on the settee with the candle burning down to the wick. I must have fallen asleep eventually as when I awoke, I found a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. My landlady had a day off. Who had placed it there?

“Hello Bunny,” a voice said.

“Hello Raffles,” I said instinctively and then did a double-take.

There he was, laying across the opposite settee, his head resting on his fist, his eyes wide and dazzling, his smile bewitching. He may have been a ghost but he still looked absolutely magnificent. I don’t know what kind of beauty regime they had where he’d been but it wasn’t too bad.

“Thought you got rid of me, didn’t you?” he said with a teasing smile.

“Well, yes. Where have you been?”

“Outside, roaming about. Thought I’d give you time to mull things over, perhaps reconsider my offer of joining me.”

“You still want to kill me?”

“I don’t want to kill you, Bunny, it’s just one of many options. I don’t have to kill you myself, someone else could equally do it. Or you could do it yourself. You almost did once, remember?”

“How could I forget? But that was a long time ago, A.J, how could you even suggest such a thing?”

“I’m sorry old boy, I simply miss you. Where I’ve been there just wasn’t anyone who compared to my Rabbit.”

I sat up and cautiously made my way to his side, reaching out my hand to touch him. I slid my fingers down his cheek. “You feel real, you feel alive. But how can that be?”

“It’s an illusion of life, Bunny. You want to feel me so you can. If someone else tried, they’d probably not succeed. Besides, you’re the only one who can see me, I’m invisible to everyone else.”

“Well I’m glad,” I said, suppressing a sob, “I don’t think I could bear not touching you.”

To my surprise, Raffles lit a cigarette and took a long drag. 

“You can smoke?”

“They encourage it! Bunny, you ask too many questions.”

“Well I need to know answers. I was also going to ask why you’re wearing your cricket whites.”

“Ah yes, well, not my decision, white seems to be the popular choice up there.”

“But you weren’t up, you were down!”

“Ah yes but red’s not my colour, and cricket seems to be quite popular in the afterlife. Whether you’re up there or down below, there’s always a way for the English to play cricket.”

“So, are you stuck here now, wandering the Earth forever because of me?”

“I really can’t answer that. I don’t know how long this will last. I’m new to this myself. I’m still an amateur dead-man.”

I half-smiled and as I watched him smoking his cigarette, I realised how much I had missed everything about our time together, the way we sat in the cottage in the evenings and played piano side by side, the way I would become irritable with him for keeping something from me, the way we snuggled together by the fire when winter came. 

“I’m enjoying being with you again, A.J, but I’m not going to die for you. Is there any other way we can be together?”

“Are you sure? I can make it painless, any way you’d like. Push you on your bicycle down a steep hill, mix up your tea with arsenic.”

“First of all, I can’t ride a bicycle anymore and second, how is putting arsenic in my tea not painful?”

“Good point.”

“Raffles! You could actually kill me? Physically do it?”

He laughed as he took another drag of the cigarette and then stubbed it out on the plant pot. “You’re right Bunny, I may be dead as a dodo but I still have feelings and I couldn’t harm you. If you were to die of natural causes then that would be fine though, wouldn’t it?”

“Raffles!”

He floated up from his seat and hovered gracefully back and forth across the sitting room. I tried to keep up with him but as I did, he disappeared and when I turned to find him again, he was now laid out upon the top of the piano as if he was waiting for me to serenade him with a melody at the keys.

“Well, Bunny, if you can’t come with me and I don’t know how to leave anyway, this means we’ll have to have the dandiest time of it here as long as we can.”

I sat down at the piano stool. “How so?”

“Well, Bunny, there were many things I never got to do when I was alive. We had plans, we could’ve stolen a number of jewels from the grandest palaces, vaults, banks. Now I’m dead, well there’s nothing to stop me.”

“It didn’t seem to stop you much before. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not dead and I’ve got this blasted stick. I’m rather visible and slow.”

“I wouldn’t dream of putting you in trouble again. But think of it, Bunny, I could slip in and out of vaults, and yes it would rather take the sport out of it, but oh to see Inspector Mackenzie’s face when he discovers that the work could only have been achieved by a dead man. And no one on Earth is going to accuse a ghost unless they want to be put in an asylum.”

“I’ll be put in an asylum if people see me talking to myself. Our landlady is due back tomorrow, how will I explain this?”

“You don’t.”

“She might see you. She believes. She was the one that summoned you with all her weird chanting.”

“Well then she won’t mind if I stick around, will she?”

“Oh A.J.” I threw myself into his arms, my head resting on his chest. But where normally I felt warmth, comfort and a heartbeat, there was none. “You are a ghost, it really is you!”

“No, my heart’s not beating. I’m afraid I really have no heart anymore.”

“That’s awful, how do you love someone?”

“You don’t just love someone with your body, Bunny, you love them with your soul. A.J Raffles adored you, so as a ghost I haven’t changed.”

I felt him brushing the strands of hair from my eyes and I wanted to stay in his embrace forever. He may have been a spirit, but he was my spirit, and our love transcended life and all the heavens.

“I always intended to haunt you forever if I could.” 

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

The biggest most mischievous smile I’d ever seen suddenly appeared on his face.

“You know, Bunny, there are other more intimate things I have yet to try as a ghost.”

My eyebrows rose!

…

Night-time was a strange occurrence now that I shared my bed with a ghost. Raffles had been with me for two months and there was no sign of him returning to the beyond any time soon. I seemed to have summoned him indefinitely but that was alright with me because I was enjoying his company and apart from a few ground rules about popping up at the most inconvenient times, I was happy to let it continue no matter how unconventional the relationship had become. 

“Uh…A.J,” I said, wrapping my arms around my freezing body. “There’s an awful draft.”

I looked up at him, his body levitating a good few feet above the bed with our blanket draped over him. I nearly laughed at the image. A.J Raffles was a ghost. He was my ghost, and I didn’t care how ridiculous that sounded because we were together and death could never part us. And I had a really good idea for a novel about it!


End file.
